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For the Birds

Posted by Ivy

Today my friend Ali went to cover the Citizen Science day at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, and posted a photo of a little baby great horned owl on Instagram while she was there. I’ve never seen a baby owl in person before, so as soon as I was finished with my assignment, I zipped over to Felix Neck.

It was definitely worth the trip. The owlet is six weeks old, and going to its foster nest tomorrow. And it is a fierce little fluffball.

OH MY GOODNESS.

The Mass Audobon staff had brought other birds of prey from their education programs as well: a barn owl, which I didn’t see, and a peregrine falcon, which was stunning.

Yeesh.

They also brought a screech owl. I went to cover the Christmas Bird Count earlier this year, and when I was out with the birders at 6 a.m. we heard screech owls…but again, I’d never seen one before.

They are tiny.

I’ve been watching the BBC’s Life of Birds on and off for the past month, and while it’s fantastic to watch all of the neat footage they got for the documentaries, it’s another thing to actually see birds of prey like this in person. That was the crux of the Mass Audobon program: bringing the animals, most of which have been hurt and can’t live in the wild anymore, into classrooms so kids can gain a greater sense of the wild world. Pretty cool! I’m so glad I decided to stop by.

Also, here is one more of the great horned owlet. Because it is just too much:

Snow Scenes + Snow Critters

Posted by Ivy

Last year, it snowed exactly once on Martha’s Vineyard.

This year, we’ve had two snows in the past week, with more on the way. In between those two snows, we had a very pleasant and very unseasonal 50-degree day. I don’t know what the heck is going on.

 

This morning, instead of going to Menemsha, I went to the Farm Institute to continue the ongoing animals in the snow series.

 


(Superstorm) Sandy and Lucy (Vincent)

Posted by Ivy

Jack Lionette, left, and Tristan Scott, both of Chilmark, Mass., dash through piles of foam at Lucy Vincent Beach on October 30, 2012, the day after winds and rain from Hurricane Sandy whipped through Martha’s Vineyard. The storm caused the collapse of the prominent clay cliffs on Lucy Vincent, and washed away the beach’s dunes. School was canceled for two days due to the storm.

I don’t even have any photos of my own showing what Lucy Vincent looked like before Sandy came along; I’ve only been to this beach twice. Suffice to say that the square-shaped dent in the cliffs didn’t exist before. Since school was out for the day, there were a lot of families at the beach checking out the damage for themselves (there were also a lot of photographers). I took Jack’s photo last year when Remy wrote a piece on his dad, who’s the chef at Morning Glory Farm…the Vineyard is so small in the off-season.

Here’s what it looked like on the other side of the cliffs:

And here is a sandpiper who is probably pretty happy about the new tide line:

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Beer Bike

Posted by Ivy

This was the seventh year in a row I’ve taken photos at Beer Bike. It is the the third year in a row I’ve blogged about it…but it never gets old.

For those who don’t feel like checking out back entries, Beer Bike takes place every spring at Rice University (my alma mater).

First, campus gets overtaken by a giant, formerly-Guinness-record-holding water balloon fight. This is where the beer comes in; most people are, um, soaked both inside and out.

Following the water balloon fight, everybody heads to the bike track for the races.

There are three races: alum, women’s and men’s. Each has ten chuggers (women chug 12 ounces of water, men chug 24 ounces; they used to down beer, but water replaced that when people realized it was a lot easier to chug- and therefore made it easier to win races) and ten bikers. As soon as a chugger finishes his water, the flag goes up and the biker goes off. This repeats ten times. First team to finish the relay wins!



Halfway through the men’s race, the track judges decided conditions were too windy (there had been seven crashes already in the race) for biking to continue, so they switched to a Beer Run with five legs left to go. The bikers who had yet to race thus had to go from biking a mile as fast as they could to running a third of a mile as fast as they could. Not the same thing. I don’t envy them that switch at all.


If these photos all look like the same maroon team racing…that’s because I’m biased and photographed mainly those bikers/chuggers from Brown College, where I used to live. One of the perks of not actually being on assignment :)

A Soggy Story

Posted by Ivy

After three years using a Canon Rebel XT as my only body (when I didn’t have access to the MU photo locker), I finally upgraded to a 7D (video hooray!). I’d been looking forward to testing out the 8fps feature at the first home football game of the season…and then it poured that day, which put a bit of a damper (no pun intended) on my plans.

I was still assigned to photograph the game, though, so I wrapped the body and my telephoto in two layers of garbage bag, and taped everything down with duct tape. Then I went out to shoot.

But I had to leave a little bit exposed beneath the garbage bags so I could work the dials and change settings…and after about a half an hour, enough water snuck into the camera body that it stopped working. Just like that. My two-day-old camera that I had sunk my summer savings into. The only good thing was I had managed to get enough photos that I could still turn in something to the paper.

I was trying my best not to freak out, and I did know about the rice trick, so I decided to give it a go. I put the camera body in a giant Ziploc baggie with about a pound of rice, and let it stay there for six days. I tested everything after a day, but nothing happened; after three days, though, the display flickered a little bit, like it was trying to start up (hope!). By the end of the week the rice had absorbed all of the water. And the camera works like it just came off the factory line. I’m still floored by this; I really thought it would end up being one of those tricks that works for everybody but me.

So. Here are some of the photos that almost did me in:

Staff: Enterprise photo + this week's idea log

Posted by Ivy

I had really been hoping they wouldn’t fill the outdoor pool at the Rec Center before I could get pictures of people tanning around an empty hole in the ground, but, of course, by the time I actually got over there with a camera, it had already been filled for the season. Oh well. I took this picture anyway (before an employee spotted me and made me leave). It reminds me of some sort of elite Miami Beach hideaway or hotel.

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As for other enterprise ideas, I’m hoping to get out into Columbia sometime towards the end of one of my shifts (6pm-ish), when the light is excellent, and find some subjects. I saw some kids playing pickup soccer over by the ARC today; if they do that regularly, that would make a good feature photo. Actually, there’s a surprising amout of events at the ARC that the Missourian doesn’t cover, so that whole area is probably a good place to start for enterprise things.

I found a subject for my first grad component–she’s the newest member of Columbia’s improv troupe–and wish I had more time to work with her on this project (it’s due Monday), but I’ll work with what I have (and will have, after Saturday), and hopefully make a good presentation. I started thinking about other potential subjects, since I’d like to get more of a jump on the next grad component phase, and so far am still liking the over-50 softball player idea, as well as the professional bagpiper idea, the interpreter-for-the-deaf idea, and the wedding-cake-maker idea. I’ll start exploring all of these further as soon as this weekend (which is going to be insane) is over.

Also, in super exciting news, I bought a new camera! Yay! It’s a Canon 50D– I couldn’t make the switch to Nikon after all, mostly because I couldn’t justify buying a new camera AND strobe AND telephoto lens when I already had the latter two. I probably didn’t absolutely NEED new gear, but I wanted to make the upgrade before I go to California in three weeks, and didn’t feel like waiting any more (mostly I’m just excited about going to CA). I’m also relieved to have my own gear around a a backup to the Missourian equipment….I made the mistake of using a D2H last weekend, without realizing that that camera has a terrible, terrible megapixel count and can’t handle high ISOs. Ugh. Better to avoid ever having to use it again.

I get to go shoot a catfish tournament this weekend! I don’t think there will be noodling (from what I can tell, it’s just standard rod-and-reel fishing), but I’m still looking forward to it. I think one of my favorite things about Staff is how many opportunities I’ve had to get out of Columbia and explore. Reporters with cars are awesome.

Turncoat

Posted by Ivy

Dear fellow photogs,

What would it take to get you to switch systems? I’ve never owned anything but Canon (and this was what we used in my college newsroom), and therefore feel like a total traitor for even considering selling my current camera to some random convergence person (I don’t think a photo-j would want to use a Rebel XT professionally) and starting up with Nikon. This is not to diss my camera, which has served me well for two and a half years…but I need more firepower, and I can’t decide if I should get it in the form of Canon or Nikon. If I could afford L-Series lenses, this question would not be so much of a problem; I’d just stick with what I have. But Nikon seems to be better for mid-range photojournalism in the overlap of quality and cost (it’s closer to the middle of that particular Venn diagram than Canon seems to be).

Help! Any and all input is much appreciated….